Steam is full of well or poorly hidden features that show interesting information. A particularly interesting statistics screen looks at download rates around the world. He shows, how Steam is used in different countries around the world.
This makes a few interesting observations, for example, that games are even being downloaded in Antarctica. The large but largely uninhabited land mass at the South Pole can also be selected and anyone who does so will find that a total of 162 gigabytes have been downloaded via Steam in the last seven days. That’s quite a lot! Like Baldur’s Gate 3 once. Or Undertale 1,000 times.
If you then switch to the satellite view, you can even see exactly where the data was downloaded. Then a single yellow dot can be discovered in the very east of Antarctica:
Who is playing between the ice and snow?
Also has already been discussed on Reddit, who plays a few games so far south of our planet. The most common answer is as simple as it is obvious: penguins. But others don’t want to make it that easy for themselves.
There is, of course, the assumption that this is someone at a research station. Of course, scientists stationed here can also have some time off from time to time, and since bears don’t necessarily dance in the surrounding area (polar bears only exist at the North Pole!), a little gaming would certainly be a nice way to pass the time. One user even believes that they can narrow down the location to the Italian Mario Zuccelli station, where a maximum of 124 people can be accommodated.
But it is doubtful whether this is really true.
More interesting statistics
Regardless of the whole Antarctic number, it’s fun to click through the interactive map a little and pay particular attention to: where in the world how much is charged. And above all, how quickly!
In Europe, no country in the last seven days has seen more data downloaded via Steam than in Europey. Here we are at the top with a total of 43 petabytes, while right behind are Great Britain with 30 PB and France with 24 PB. A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes.
However, the average highest possible download speed in Europey is only 123 Mbps, while in France it climbs to up to 340 Mbps. In Europey the numbers vary enormously depending on the provider, while in Europe they are generally over 100 Mbps.
Worldwide, the most data from Steam was pulled from Chinahere there were a total of 286 PB in the last seven days, while Antarctica is in last place.